Pregnancy and antenatal care - General Practice: The Integrative Approach

General practitioners see patients throughout their life cycle, and integrative healthcare begins before conception and continues throughout pregnancy. Depending on your practice environment, you may be the sole practitioner responsible for the patient’s antenatal care as a GP/obstetrician, part of the antenatal shared care team including hospital-based midwives and an obstetrician, or see the patient for preconception advice, and then less frequently during the pregnancy if the patient is seeing an obstetrician for their antenatal care through personal preference or medical best practice. This chapter provides an introduction and overview of pregnancy and antenatal care as well as preconception counselling.